Posted inArts & Culture, Books

‘A Dispiriting Tale’

The cosmos of natural science today moves on a scale unimaginable to ancient prophets evangelists and makers of creeds Many thoughtful people have now concluded that the universe has outgrown the biblical God who is said to be its creator To them the content of Christian faith seems hopelessly in

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Ways to Witness

Last month students in my class on women and Catholicism spent an evening at a Catholic Worker House in South Bend Ind We prepared a meal shared it with the guests and listened to an after-dinner talk by Margaret Pfeil a staff member at the house and my colleague at Notre Dame Pfeil spoke abou

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

A Moral Enterprise

I plan to make this book required reading for my first-year students at Loyola University Chicago rsquo s Stritch School of Medicine I also would highly recommend it to anyone facing serious illness And frankly that rsquo s all of us It is a marvelous book that will change those who read it and

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Military Monolith

In October 1967 hundreds of thousands of college students and ordinary citizens gathered in Washington D C to express their outrage about the Vietnam War The pranksters of that time including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin told the newsmen covering the march that they also hoped to levitate the

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

A Good Re-read

In an age habituated to sensationalism and big effects an austere and nuanced novel like Isobel English rsquo s Every Eyelike the work of her French predecessor Gustave Flaubertmay not appeal to everyone Even Madame Bovary has the soap opera appeal of adultery a theme by the way it shares with

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

As He Alone ‘Sees’ It

Jason Robertsa contributor to The Village Voice among other publicationsbecame curious about a certain Englishman named James Holman after reading a brief chapter on him in a book about eccentric travelers Trying to learn more about the 19th-century blind man and his extensive travels Roberts was

Posted inArts & Culture, Books

Everyday Renewals

I carried a copy of Seamus Heaney rsquo s latest collection District and Circle with me to Europe this summer reading it on buses and trains and at outdoor restaurants in London This was the rainless summer when London hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in recorded history happily

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